


if this is gonna run round in my head, i might as well be dreaming

by elsinorerose



Series: out here in the dark [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Flangst?, Flirting, Fluff, Introspection, and what comes out is a three thousand plus word character study, gazing wistfully off into the distance, sometimes you sit down to write a simple conversation, this fic has it all, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-07 01:20:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17950904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsinorerose/pseuds/elsinorerose
Summary: "Love, even when it is very young, attaches you with an invisible string. You must be careful where you let it pull you, my little sapphire.”Jester conducts an experiment.





	if this is gonna run round in my head, i might as well be dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Out of the Woods" by Nickel Creek.

Jester is awake.

She has been awake for maybe a whole hour, lying wrapped up in her blanket, with even her face covered — not that it's particularly cold, just that she's used to hiding under a blanket. It makes her feel comfortable, safe, even. And she would very much like to feel more comfortable right now.

The past few days — week, maybe? — you'd think she'd remember, right, how many days it's been since she literally _died_ — well, the past _while_ has been…lots of things. Emotional. Confusing. Uncomfortable. _Weird._

For a lot of reasons.

They're back on the road now, destined for Port Damali, a pretty fair trek from the eastern side of the Empire, and the rest of the Mighty Nein have mostly settled back into treating her like usual. Nott was a mess at first, bursting into tears every now and then whenever anything reminded her that Jester had even just been injured. Fjord and Beau spent a few days coddling her, going out of their way to carry her things for her, open doors, help her in and out of the cart they'd rented for the journey. It was sort of funny at first, but quickly started to get on her nerves. She's glad that everyone has, apparently, gotten over it and gone back to normal.

Almost everyone.

Jester sighs and finally sits up, shoving her blanket off to the side in frustration. There's no point trying to fall back asleep now — the sun has risen, and Beau is stirring next to her, not quite awake but already trying to say something in an incoherent mumble. The rest of them will be waking soon as well. A groggy Beau starting her day is impossible to sleep through, Jester thinks with a little giggle.

But she isn't sure she actually wants to be here when everyone wakes up. She's been relentlessly wondering about something, and it's hard to really properly wonder when other people are distracting you.

She remembers something Mama told her years ago, when Jester was in her first blush of _growing up,_ her heart and head full of questions about corsets and kisses and mirrors, about _falling in love,_ when her mother had first begun teaching her, unknowingly, the secret to disguising sad smiles as happy ones.

"If you walk away from the crowd on your own to some quiet place," Mama had said in answer to her question, deftly adjusting the pins in her piled-up hair and smiling at Jester's reflection over her shoulder in the vanity mirror, "to lean on a balcony, perhaps, or look out of a window, and if that one person follows you, to talk or just to be next to you? This is how you know. Love, even when it is very young, attaches you with an invisible string. You must be careful where you let it pull you, my little sapphire.”

Always a word of caution at the end, she remembers, and she remembers too the vague sense of disappointment at an answer that seemed too obvious and easy, that wasn't a _secret trick_ or some sort of mysterious, adult-sounding riddle. _Just see if they like hanging out with you._ Well, that was boring.

She's older now, though, and she has learned a lot more than Mama probably hoped she would about — everything, really — and some things that once sounded boring and simple have been transformed by the years into visions of warmth, of comfort. There are given truths that she hadn't paid attention to in ages, until she woke up and found that they had turned into doubts.

So she stands up, straightens her sleep-mussed dress a little, takes a few calming breaths, and walks away from camp.

There's a little hill, covered with grass and topped with a couple of scraggly trees trying their best, that overlooks the road to the north perhaps fifty yards or so from where Caduceus parked the cart last night. It looks like a good spot for reading or staring out dramatically into the distance. Jester makes for it, the springy, early morning turf soft with dew under her bare feet, and finds her way easily up the gentle slope. Behind her, the sounds of camp waking up — Caduceus starting breakfast, Beau going through her morning kata, Nott telling Yasha about the weird dream she just had — drift through the dawn stillness. It's the hour when even small, far-away noises sound fresh and close, and Jester smiles when she realizes she can still hear Fjord snoring.

The trees at the top of the hill are silver birches, and Jester sits down at the base of one, spreading her cloak underneath her on the damp grass. It really is beautiful out here. She missed the sunrise proper, but the sky still bears a few hints of pink and orange on the tree-studded horizon, and although the wind carries a chill, the way it tosses the tall grass at the edge of the road and makes the birch boughs dance is soothing. It would be a delight to sit here for a while, even if she weren't doing it for an experiment.

She refuses to look back behind her toward her friends to _check_ for… _anything_ _…_ and instead rests her head against the smooth bark of the tree and gazes at the little village that she can just catch a glimpse of, peeping over the rolling edge of the Vetterwin hill country to the north. It would be less than a day's travel from here, she thinks, but they aren't going there, they're going west, and there won't be any towns to pass through for the rest of the week, even if Caduceus pushes the horses. It's going to be more nights of unpacking blankets and bedrolls, working out who'll sleep where within the borders of Caleb’s magic bubble spell, and falling asleep staring at the stars, with that constant awareness, like an invisible elbow pressed into her side, that he is falling asleep somewhere next to her.

That's the thing about sitting pensively under a birch tree on a beautiful hill in the quiet of early morning: you end up _thinking._ It's _very_ irritating.

Jester wonders when she first noticed the unassuming sweetness in Caleb's rare smiles, or the satisfying curve of his jawline whenever he tucks a stray lock of hair behind his ear. His hair is growing longer these days, not quite long enough to tie back or braid — although that will be a _fun_ project one day — but enough that it sometimes falls into his eyes when he's bent over absorbed in a book, forgetting that the world beyond the page exists. She wonders when she noticed that too. Or the deftness in his long fingers as he trails them through the empty air to spell out an arcane glyph and unleash a torrent of magic at an enemy, defending her and the rest of the Nein even as his fear must be roaring at him to run away. The way his voice takes on a certain _arch_ when he's teasing her with a straight face. How the blue of his eyes is just a shade lighter than her own skin.

There is a lot to notice about Caleb.

Jester is pretty sure she must have known these things before last week, because it’s been like a _year_ that she’s basically been living with Caleb, but she definitely hadn’t sat down and _thought_ about them before, not until after that…day.

If she’s honest, she has avoided thinking about that day as much as she can help it. There is a lot… _there,_ that she doesn’t even know how she’s supposed to feel about. So she has decided not to feel or think anything about any of it. She’s not going to imagine the moment when that cruel axe drove all the breath out of her as it buried itself in her stomach, or the way her name carried on her friends’ voices sounded strange and foreign. Or how she’d had no idea she was dying, so used to falling unconscious on battlefields now, expecting Nott’s trembling hands with a healing potion or Caduceus’s steady ones with a prayer of light to lift her right back up out of the darkness as usual. Or how they hadn’t. Why hadn’t they? Why was she _here,_ where everything was still dark, where she couldn’t feel her body or understand what was happening or open her mouth to shout for Mama, for the Traveler, for Caleb…?

No, she won’t think about those things. She will think about her nice dress, the one that Nott bought for her that night before they left the inn because her last one was — yes, well, she will think about the wind in her hair, and that funny joke Beau told last night, and how shy Fjord looked when she complimented him on how his tusks are growing in, and Frumpkin and Nugget chasing each other playfully around the campfire. She is fine.

“Nice spot.”

Her eyes open — she hadn’t realized they’d drifted shut — and she pretends she isn’t startled. “Yeah!” She points ahead of her. “Look, you can see houses that way, I think that might be Vetterwin.”

Caleb sits down next to her, his back against the other tree. He’s got a book in hand, of course, but he doesn’t open it, instead resting it on one bent knee in front of him while he stretches out his other leg lazily on the grass. His eyes follow her finger north, to the village whose whitewashed walls seem to blink in the sunlight, and the corners of his mouth turn up just a bit. He looks like he could use a shave, thinks Jester, and then she thinks: it’s not a bad look on him, actually. Maybe she should tell him he should grow a beard again. He would blush, and it’s always fun to make Caleb blush.

She’s staring at him. Quickly she looks away. Her heart is going kind of fast, which is pretty dumb, because it’s just _Caleb._ He hasn’t even noticed her, he’s staring straight ahead, his gaze lost somewhere on the horizon.

“May I ask you a question?” he says quietly, after a few moments of nothing but the wind in the branches above them.

Her heart stutters. “Of course!” she says brightly. “Is it why am I so good at making campfire donuts?”

Caleb ducks his head down with a little chuckle. They both remember _that_ disaster from a few nights ago.

She wonders when she first noticed how his laugh makes her feel.

“Ah, no,” he says. He’s still not looking at her. “I was wondering if I could ask — and you do not have to answer, but — do you remember what it felt like? While you were…”

They both know he doesn’t have to finish the sentence. Jester hugs her knees to her chest. _That’s_ not the question she was expecting.

“If it’s too much to talk about I understand,” Caleb is saying —

“No, no! It’s fine.” She smiles at him. “Honestly it wasn’t…it didn’t feel like very much. At all. I mean I literally couldn’t feel anything, I didn’t have a body.” She pauses, considering. “It was maybe more like when you’re dreaming, but you’re not really dreaming _about_ anything, you’re just asleep but not asleep too.”

Caleb is scratching his forearm, where the sleeve is rolled up and those very faint scars are still visible. Jester feels a pang somewhere inside her. She wants to grab his hand and make him stop — would he ever let her, one day, she wonders, use some of her magic to make those scars disappear?

 _He’ll still scratch at them,_ says a gentle voice in her heart. _That’s a scar deep inside, one you can’t heal._

 _Who says I can’t?_ She hugs her knees closer. _I’m a very good healer._

“Did it hurt?” asks Caleb softly.

Jester opens her mouth to reply, something about the silence, the confusion, the loneliness, then that stabbing sadness when she could hear her friends pleading with her through what seemed like a thick foggy veil, Nott’s voice shaking, Beau’s taut with suppressed tears, Caleb’s low and aching and gentle, and so _sad,_ so weighed down with that tired grief he carries with him everywhere like a cloak on his shoulders, and the weight of that book, a slim volume but so heavy, she can almost feel it resting on the chest she doesn’t have, and he didn’t even need to give it, she would have come back anyway, why did they all think they had to plead _so hard,_ she would never have left them there, she loves them, loves them all so much it’s like stones in her soul, loves Nott, loves Beau, loves Fjord in all his different accents, loves Caduceus with his wise eyes, loves Yasha, loves Caleb, almost painfully, almost _dangerously,_ all of them —

“No, it didn’t hurt.” She gives him a grin. “It was kind of _relaxing._ I mean, except for the being dead part.”

He’s watching her now, eyes searching her face, and she has an uncomfortable feeling that he’s probably not completely fooled. “Were you disappointed in us? For not — for letting it happen, or for not — for letting you down?”

“Caleb,” she says softly. “I would never be. And you didn’t.”

“But if we had.” His hand is flexing open and shut, like he doesn’t realize he’s doing it. “Do you think —”

“But you didn’t.”

He looks down at the book he’s still holding, looks miserable, and understanding wells up in Jester’s heart.

“Caleb,” she repeats, trying to be as gentle as possible, “is this about your parents?”

She almost wishes she hadn’t spoken. The color has drained from Caleb’s face, and he shuts his eyes. He had hoped she wouldn’t guess, she realizes. His knuckles have gone white where he grips the book resting on his knee.

So it’s not about — he didn’t follow her here because — right, this is different. Okay. Sometimes it’s an invisible string, sometimes it’s the dead parents that you never talk about.

Well, it’s too late to take it back, and talking about it will help him, it really will. Even if he looks right now like she’d gotten up and kicked him hard in the stomach. She swallows a teensy bit of disappointment and thinks about what to say.

“I’ve never met them,” she begins slowly, “but I know that they were proud of you, and they loved you, and when you’re proud of someone and you love them, you forgive them when they make mistakes.” She thinks of the ocean, of blood. “Even big mistakes.”

He wishes she’d never found out about how they died, Jester is fully aware, and sometimes she wishes that too — not because it changes anything about him and her, just because anything that hurts Caleb hurts Jester.

She lets go of her knees, scooches closer, until she’s sitting at his side, able to put a hand on his shoulder, which she does, hoping it’s not crossing a line. “And I’m sure they’re not in any pain, or sad or scared or anything like that. Caduceus says that people pass over, after a while, and they go someplace where those things don’t really matter anymore.”

Well, Caduceus said he _thinks_ they do, and that’s good enough.

“Besides, I didn’t even know I _was_ dead until you guys started that ritual.”

Now the color returns to Caleb’s cheeks, and Jester can’t help but grin a little to herself. This will definitely distract him.

“It was really nice, what you said. You know, you can be very sweet.”

He’s definitely blushing now, but he glances up at her with a wry look. “Ja, I’m a very sweet person,” he deadpans.

Jester giggles. “You’re very nice! And I never said thank you.”

It’s teasing, of course, because she knows she doesn’t have to, neither of them does. They both know that. It’s already been said, in looks and in smiles, in Caleb hurrying out the door as she sat up coughing and gasping in that dark little room at the inn.

He’s still looking at her, and she’s still looking at him, and it’s like fire. “I should be thanking you. You came back.”

And suddenly his hand is reaching up to cover hers on his shoulder.

“You came back,” he repeats. “So thank you.”

Jester is breathless. She breaks their gaze, looks down at her feet, isn’t the grass so interesting the way it grows there in the dirt like that? “You’re welcome,” she manages lamely.

There’s a beat, and then Caleb’s book falls off his knee onto the ground, and whether he takes his hand off hers or she lets go of his shoulder first, she isn’t sure. He picks up the book and clears his throat. “Better go work on my spells for today.”

“Oh, yeah, good idea.” _Oh, yeah, good idea,_ the voice in her head mocks her. She wants to roll her eyes at herself. _Great comeback, stupid voice. You’re stupid._

Caleb stands up, and she looks up at him without meaning to, at the wind hushing his hair back from his face. He really is a very sweet person. He smiles down at her, and it’s like a little gift, one he doesn’t know he’s giving.

Then he’s gone, back down the hill, walking at his usual brisk pace. Jester watches him go. Definitely a failed experiment, she thinks idly, taking in the sunlight that burnishes his hair to a bright copper and the warm echo of his skin on the back of her hand. She’ll have to try again sometime. Maybe when they’re somewhere with a balcony she can lean on all wistfully.

 _Be careful where you let it pull you,_ says her heart as she gets up and follows Caleb back to camp.

Always a warning at the end.

Well, warnings are stupid. The sun is climbing in the sky, and she is _alive,_ and she will admit certain things, say certain words to herself, tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Or next week. Today, she will have breakfast, and be warm, and listen to the wind, dancing through the birches, waking up the grass.

Jester is _awake._

_fin_


End file.
